Book Review: Deep End by Ali Hazelwood

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: February 4, 2025
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships—at least, that’s what she tells herself.

Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.

So, they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water…

Scarlett is an elite collegiate diver at Stanford. Her teammate Penelope confides in her that she broke up with her boyfriend Luk, an Olympic gold medal swimmer who is on the swim team at Standford, because he likes kinky sex and she doesn’t. Scarlett shares that she too likes kinky sex. At a party, a drunken Pen tells Scarlett and Luk that they should hook up because they have the same kinks. Awkward.

At first, Scarlett is not interested but she manages to work the fact that they like the same things into almost every conversation, making it even more awkward. If that were me, I’d never mention it again after Pen embarrassed me like that!

Luk might be interested in starting something up with Scarlett and they spend a very long time talking about it before anything actually happens. Scarlett alludes that whatever she’s into is scandalizing. However, when they eventually start hooking up – because of course they do, just look at the book cover – it’s not that kinky. No one even ties each other up! If you’re a dark romance reader, you will find this dusky, not dark. I don’t mind dusky but then why is all the build up like Scarlett the biggest perv ever? Do Ali Hazelwood fans have that delicate of sensibilities? As one, I say no.

It pains me to say that Deep End did not meet my expectations for an Ali Hazelwood romance. It was good but not great. Characters from her other books had cameos, which I always think is fun. I still recommend it, especially for her fans. Just know that it’s more of a four star, rather than five star read.

Other books by Ali Hazelwood I’ve reviewed:

The Love Hypothosis
Love, Theoretically
Check & Mate
Bride
Not In Love